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Apprentice candidates need some perspective

Apprentice candidates in the boardroom
  • Posted at 11:42am
  • 22 April 2009
  • by AlisonGraham-RT

Suralan, (sob, sob, sob), I've been on an incredible journey and I don't want it to end. I'm doing this for my sick mother/dead wife/arthritic hamster/whatever." Oops, sorry, that's not The Apprentice, that's The X Factor.

"Suralan, I'm passionate about food and winning means everything to me. I simply can't leave now, this is my life." Oops, sorry again, that's MasterChef.

"Suralan. I've given 110 per cent, I'm brilliant at business and if you fire me you'll regret it because none of the other competitors is as good as me." Ah, that's better, THAT'S The Apprentice (Wednesday BBC1). But you can't blame me for getting them mixed up, can you? All that emoting, the overstatement and massive self-absorption, the sense that if the contestant is told to leave the competition, the rainforests will spontaneously catch fire and burn to the ground and we'll all die, consumed by flames, before a meteor hits the Earth, just for good measure.

Once, just once, I long for a dumped contestant to shrug his or her shoulders, go: "Fair enough, it's only a game show, no-one's dead. See ya!" before ambling off happily without rancour or bitterness to lead a good life.

But, oh no, because no-one accepts failure any more, particularly The Young People (ie anyone under 30) for whom every setback is a catastrophe that will send the failed contestant hurtling into the Earth's core where he/she will be consumed by molten lava. Or so you'd think, the way people go on.

I'm bored with seeing people begging and demeaning themselves in those Apprentice boardroom scenes. All that back-stabbing, or more precisely "front-stabbing", and unpleasantness. The recriminations, the fury. And that's just Suralan. You should see the contestants.

Come on, people, enough of the preposterous overstatements. Your lives will not end if you get booted off this ridiculous, albeit entertaining, show. You'll live. (The same goes for you, anyone out there considering auditioning for The X Factor, whenever it returns. Keep your perspective and if you get chucked out - get over it.)

And while we're on the subject of The Apprentice, is any other old-fashioned person out there just a wee bit worried that this is how The Young People think business and office life should actually be conducted?

Let's face it, The Young People are bad-mannered and inconsiderate enough as it is (and they cheek their elders, always a cardinal sin when I was A Young Person), without thinking that it's required of them to shriek into mobile phones and be screamingly vile simply to succeed in the workplace?

Maybe that's why there are no middle-aged Apprentice contestants, on the grounds that they are just too nice to care and are far too polite to be so openly horrible about their colleagues. And we're probably more scared of Bond villain Nick Hewer than we are of Suralan. Give Nick a cat to stroke and he's Blofeld.

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times

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Don't forget to check out the rest of our Apprentice content.

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